Tech Meister

The July 2015 issue of Banking Exchange features a cover story about BNY Mellon’s technology evolution and Chief Information Officer Suresh Kumar, who shares how the company is propelling itself through its third century of financial services leadership.

It’s all well and good to start a tech company in a garage and build it up into a Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Apple, or Facebook. It’s the stuff of American legend. By contrast, the process of recasting the culture of a 231-year-old financial institution into a nimble, lean, innovative technology company is, perhaps, a less dramatic story, but, in many ways, a more remarkable one. Banking has set its share of technological firsts, but in recent years, the rap has been that many players in the industry are encumbered by unwieldy legacy IT systems festooned with applications grafted on as needs change.

Why would we want to educate consultants about our business so they can go work for our competitors when we no longer need them? That’s why we insource, because we truly feel
that employees are our assets.

Suresh Kumar, Chief Information Officer, BNY Mellon

Share this quote:

Add to that the tendency for having various business and support units operating within “silos,” a situation made worse because of multiple acquisitions over the years. Taken together, you have a condition that could be described as “too complex to change.” Which makes what is being undertaken by the country’s sixth largest (and oldest) banking company quite impressive.